Schwenkenbecher, Anne | 2024
Working paper 2024:8
Part of preprint Studies in the Ethics of Coordination and Climate Change
Moral agents facing collective-action problems regularly encounter a conundrum: together, we can effect change whereas, individually, we are inefficacious. Further, what appears individually rational can be collectively suboptimal. An individual agent may employ different types of reasoning in deciding how to act vis-à-vis such problems. Reasoning in the I-mode, she takes her individual agency and efficacy in the world as the starting point: What is the best thing she can do given the circumstance and given what others do? It is act-based, best-response reasoning. The preferences of agents deliberating in the I-mode may well be other-regarding: e.g. they may aim at furthering the group’s interest or collective good. We-mode reasoning, or ʻwe-reasoningʼ, in contrast, is pattern-based: we infer our course of action from what is collectively best by way of acting as part of the group rather than for the sake of the group. I-mode reasoning with pro-group preferences (pro-group I-mode reasoning) and we-reasoning will often generate the same result, in particular in so-called strict joint necessity cases – where each agent’s contribution is necessary for realizing a specific collectively available option. I-mode reasoning will regularly generate socially suboptimal results in so-called wide joint necessity cases – such as voting or carbon footprint reductions. Moral deliberating agents use both kinds of reasoning and contextual factors seem to function as important triggers. But can we-reasoning help us determine our moral obligations vis-à-vis collective action problems?
